Jasper Fforde - The Great Troll War

We came away from the Button Trench without having made any headway, but at least some understanding of what we were to expect.

‘It looks like you were right about Shandar,’ said the Princess as we drove back into town. ‘Helping us rid the land of the Trolls was never part of his plan.’

‘Mind you,’ said Tiger, who was also present, ‘defeating the Trolls may not be relevant at all if the Mighty Shandar decides to leave the Earth as a frozen wasteland devoid of life, floating in a forgotten corner of the Milky Way. Shouldn’t we take the fight straight to Shandar?’

‘The Troll is currently the most immediate threat to our liberty,’ said the Princess. ‘We’ll fight them first then deal with Shandar.’

I liked her optimism, but wasn’t sure just how we could fight either right now.

We pulled up outside the Queens Hotel. The marksmen, eager not to sit on their hands doing nothing during a time of jeopardy, had been busy repainting the yellow lines outside the hotel, conveniently adding a ‘Monarchs Only’ parking slot.

Monty was waiting for us as we pulled up, and seemed to be looking positive about something, which might at least portend good news, even if it wasn’t actual good news.

‘Did that shade of cerulean blue that I gave you work?’ I asked, since I’d passed Ralph’s warpaint on as a possible weapon of war. A gallon of paint against several million Trolls didn’t seem like much, but it was something.

‘It did,’ he said, ‘but there’s something else I want to show you. It’s over at the Leisure Centre on Claire Street. Can you drive me up there?

‘What we do know,’ continued Monty, as we drove back up the hill, ‘is that brute force alone doesn’t work against the Troll’s ferocity. So the worriers and I were looking once again at the problem and three things struck us as mutually incompatible: first was the sheer number of the Trolls.’

‘It goes against all scholarly extrapolation of likely numbers, and every reconnaissance mission ever undertaken over Trollvania,’ said the Princess.

‘Right,’ said Monty. ‘Every Troll War was fought on the same assumption: that there weren’t very many and they must be easy to defeat. But every time humans opened the massive gates in the Troll Wall to give them a bit of a pasting, there were always far more than expected.’

‘Someone not doing their homework, it sounds like,’ I said, pulling up outside the Leisure Centre, which was now being used to train anyone who was willing to fight. Pointed sticks, kitchen implements, fists, feet, sarcasm, Trollphobic jeers – we were getting desperate.

Monty led us through to the main sports hall, which had been divided by large curtain partitions. There were desks set up with chairs, filing cabinets, phones and photocopiers, and the walls were liberally covered with pictures, diagrams, maps and charts. There were also about a dozen of General Worrier’s top worriers – including Major Worrier, who saluted smartly, bit his lip and then, the stress getting the better of him, had to be led away and sat down with a glass of water and a cool flannel on the back of his neck.

But in the centre of the curtained-off space was Molly in her Mini Traveller, doing some knitting.

‘Hello!’ she said through the window. ‘Glad to see you back, Jennifer. Sorry about Feldspar. He seemed a decent sort.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘he was.’

‘So,’ said Monty, showing me an old map of the UnUnited Kingdoms, ‘my second point is the extensive use of multiple barriers required to defeat them in the past.’

He pointed at the various features on the map.

‘As I mentioned before, we’ve got Offa’s Dyke cutting off the whole of Wales, Wat’s Dyke behind it, the others that criss-cross the land, the two ancient Roman walls at the borders of Trollvania, and now the two modern Troll Walls.’

We nodded, but didn’t see where he was going with this.

‘You had three points?’ said the Princess.

‘Ah yes: the Hive Memory. We know thoughts and memories are not universally shared, only among specific groups of individuals. And then there’s the shared tattoos. We thought it was a wise Data Integrity policy, but now we’re not so sure.’

‘You’ve lost me,’ I said.

‘And me,’ said the Princess.

‘And me ,’ said Molly, ‘and I’m a Troll so I don’t have an excuse.’

‘Okay, then,’ said Monty, ‘I’ll demonstrate. Molly, do you trust me?’

‘Yes.’

‘ Really trust me?’

Molly looked at the Princess, who nodded.

‘Yes.’

‘Good. I need you out of the car.’

Molly looked at us all in turn, then nervously at the sports hall, which even though only half its total size still seemed only just the size she might feel comfortable with. She opened the door and then, with an odd sinuous movement that reminded me of a circus contortionist climbing in and out of a small barrel, she squirmed elegantly from the car and was soon standing next to us.

‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked.

‘I need you to be yourself,’ said Monty, then, in a louder voice: ‘ Now .’

The curtain partition must have been rigged with quick-release hangings or something, for it fell to the floor, instantly doubling the floor space in the sports hall. The effect upon Molly was instantaneous: the crease we had seen running down her forehead the previous evening at the Globe reopened, and as we watched she tensed in anticipation, then dropped to her knees as her head seemed to stretch sideways.

She cried out in pain and we all took a step backwards.

‘She’s grown another set of eyes,’ whispered Tiger in astonishment, as Molly’s head continued to stretch. Her extra eyes weren’t the only things that were growing. Her legs were dividing down the centre, as were her arms, along with her body, which was separating down the middle, taking the new limbs and head with it, until, less than ten seconds later, there wasn’t one Molly standing in front of us – but two.

Molly looked at the other Molly and then gave her a sisterly hug.

‘Molly?’ I said.

‘Yes?’ replied both the Mollys in unison, seemingly oblivious – or at least unsurprised – to what had just happened.

‘I think I get it now,’ said Tiger, who was fairly quick on the uptake.

‘Lucky you,’ said the Princess, ‘because I don’t.’

‘The Troll,’ said Monty in a quiet voice, ‘is a variable-population-density life form. They do not live as a fixed number, but as a ratio. Their numbers expand and contract to fit the space available. ’

He waited a moment to let this sink in.

‘The two Troll Walls are there to keep the Trolls in a fixed space geographically,’ he explained, ‘just as the Romans used the walls, and King Offa a set of dykes. The way to defeat a Troll isn’t with weaponry, or force, or entrapment – it’s by enclosing them.’

I looked at Molly.

‘Did you know this?’

‘Look,’ said the Troll, ‘I’m not huge on the whole counting gig – as far as I’m concerned, there’s only one of me. One here, and one over there. One times one is?’

‘One,’ said Tiger.

‘There you go,’ said Molly, ‘as clear as the nose on your face.’

Monty explained that there were roughly ten thousand or so Trolls living in between the Troll Walls, but as soon as the gates opened they could expand to over three million as they spread out to meet their preset density ratio, which was based on food supply, terrain and area. It sort of made evolutionary sense, too, for in this way a creature could never exceed the limits imposed upon them by their environment.